FSEDM Interviews Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano at EDC Orlando 2014

FSEDM Interviews:

Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano at EDC Orlando 2014

If you were looking for one of the livest dance parties in Florida this year it was happening at the kineticField during Day 2 of EDC Orlando 2014. Tons of powerhouse acts took the stage throughout the day showcasing their talents to thrill one of Orlando’s biggest dance festivals to date. This year the night session was kicked off by two of the most electrifying DJs in the game; Sunnery James and Ryan Marciano. From start to finish Sunnery James and Ryan Marciano maintained a high energy crowd by staying true to their tribal sound that they have become known for. Their set never had a dull moment with tons of breakdown sections consisting of groovy drums and funky baselines while their drops were accompanied by fireworks lighting up the sky above the festival grounds.

Sunnery James and Ryan Marciano had a very busy and successful 2014. They have preformed at EDC Vegas, EDC Orlando, EDC Mexico, Ultra Miami, Ultra Japan, maintained a residency at Hakkasan in Vegas., and also have played at multiple venues around the world this year. In the first half of the year they released a collab with Ariyan titled Circus and another with Miri Ben-Ari called One Life. During the summer they released an original titled “Salute” that rose to the top of the Beatport charts for weeks and has made it’s way consistently into festival sets throughout the past 5 months.

After their epic set at the kineticField stage this year at EDC Orlando I was able to sit down with them and ask a few questions about their career, being a producer, and the future of their sound. Read our discussion below and hit play on their set from EDC Orlando this year to relive the amazing night! ENJOY!

How was playing at the new Main Stage at EDC Orlando?

Sunnery James – We been preforming for so long but every time we come off stage it’s a different feeling. It’s always an adventure for us because there is so much energy coming from the stage, especially here at EDC with the great production and lights.

Ryan Marciano– It was like a fairy tail today, I almost burned my eyebrows off from the fireworks!

Did you get to drop any unreleased material, and how did it turn out if you did?

Sunnery James – Yes we played 3 new tracks tonight. One was a remix we did for Calvin Harris’ track called “Under Control”, which will be coming out soon. We also played 2 new exclusives that I can’t say the name of yet, but they all went really well and received good crowd reactions!

What can you tell us about DJing in Vegas, do you have any favorite spots?

Sunnery James– Well now of days if you’re a DJ and you don’t have a residency then you are not a part of the team. We started off at Hakkasan and also have earned a residency at Marquee. Hakkassan really believed in us and gave us a great promotional offer and we been teamed up with them for over a year. It’s been really great for our fan base to have the Vegas residencies.

Ryan Marciano– It’s so hard to chose what club you want because all the clubs in Vegas are so amazing. But when we came to Hakkasan to see the venue and tried the food we were like “Ok this is it!”

Sunnery James– There so much you can do in Vegas. We can do full production shows in just about every club so that just makes it an amazing city to play in.

SJ & RM at Hakkasan

Do your sets change depending where you are preforming?

Sunnery James – We are really diverse when traveling and playing different parts of the world, but we always try to keep that tribal vibe in our sets that is very danceable. In between that we play anything from tech-house to trance to big room. It honestly depends on the crowd and whatever keeps the crowd moving. We don’t only like fist pumping, we like to keep the groove!

Ryan Marciano– Basically in between our tribal sound we will play anything from dark to happy big room and progressive house. Whatever keeps attracting the fans to dance!

At Full Sail we have lots of aspiring producers and engineers attending our school striving to find their place in the EDM industry. Any advice you can give them?

Sunnery James – Depends what they want to do. If you want to be a producer just focus on your sound and being able to construct powerful sounds so other producers or people who are strictly DJs can seek you out for help. But if you want to be a DJ it doesn’t matter how good your sound is you have to have a signature sound. Once you have your signature sound you can get your name out there and collaborate with other producers and get to a point when people know a particular sound belongs to you… and make sure to never copy! You have to develop your own original sound.

Ryan Marciano– It honestly makes it way easier to perform when you have your own original sound because everything you do yourself is what the people in the crowd and fans grow to love. This will draw more people to your performances.

Do you feel its important to listen to other genres of music?

Sunnery James– The whole electronic dance music scene is based on house music now and house music came from hip-hop and is based off other genres such as jazz, funk, and classical music. When we travel to different cities we will listen to different albums from the past to draw inspiration to go into the studio. In art it’s all been done before, going all the way back to Mozart and Bach the greats. So we tend to go back in time to draw inspiration for something fresh.

If we wanted to research the artist that originally inspired you, who would we search for?

Sunnery James– Theres a lot of artist actually. We started off listening to Louie Fader, Kenny Dope, and Dennis Ferrer. We also drew lots of inspiration from Amsterdam local dis that played all that funky music in the club. So we got a lot of inspiration from some old school guys. Then we got really inspired by the Swedish House Mafia with there fantastic music. The Swedes then began coming out with very powerful and tribal songs that ended up influencing our sound greatly.

Ryan Marciano– We were actually really lucky that the Swedish House Mafia and Erick Morillo picked us up because when we started playing shows with them we began traveling the world to preform.

Sunnery James– Sometimes you got to be lucky, but we also got picked because we stood for something. We truly believed in our music and those guys saw that so they started to believe in us and we gained their support. So you always have to stand by your sound and be it’s biggest supporter.

Are there any collaboration we can look forward to?

Sunnery James– We are working on lots of collaborations right now. We are finishing a track with Sander Van Doorn currently and we started a track with Steve Angelo a while ago that we are trying to finish.

Ryan Marciano– We actually started a track with W&W this past weekend and its sick! It’s a very interesting track but we cannot play it yet. We are always open to collaborating with very diverse artist. Orjan Nilsen actually walked in earlier asking if we wanted to do a collab. It’s tons of fun to do collaborations with guys who are doing totally different stuff because we draw so much influence from each other to create something new and different. The track we are doing with W&W it’s a combinations of both of our sounds to form big room techno. You really get the feel of both artist in the track.

As your’re traveling are you working on a portable studio at all in your spare time?

Sunnery James– I’m always working on music on my laptop but I just built a new studio in my home. So whenever the tour is over that is the first place we are going to so we can start laying down all our new ideas.

Ryan Marciano– Its a sick studio but we have been traveling for a few months now and we just can’t wait to get home to work in it.

Any last comments on what to expect in the future from you guys?

Ryan Marciano – We like to experiment a lot with our sounds and productions in the studio. We will continue to surprise fans by either doing a big room track, a tech track, or even an underground track because we never end up doing the same thing over again. The only element that will stay the same in our productions is the groove our drums and bass line bring to our songs.